As we progress in our spirituality I think we learn a lot more about the layers of the basic tenants of Sikhi. The concepts of God, hukam, ardas, langar even… everything can be understood on deeper levels. Gurbani tells us “if you will bless me with happiness, then I will worship and adore you. Even in pain, I will meditate on you. Even if you give me hunger, I will still feel satisfied; I am joyful, even in the midst of sorrow.” The last two weeks has given me a lot more perspective on this line of Gurbani. It is certainly difficult to meditate under some life circumstances. It makes us realize the importance of practicing simran constantly, so in the times that we are ill, the times that we are facing dukh and difficulty, that we can fall upon our patterns of practice. In fact someone recently told me those that will meditate do face significant takleef in life. When we look back at the lives of Bhagat Kabeer, or even Guru Nanak Dev Ji, we can see that indeed they did face so much adversity for walking the true path of God. The difficulties are not experienced as such by someone who lovingly walks the way of God, but I think that by external circumstance certainly we can see that people were trying to make the life of Kabeer and Namdev very difficult. There was a lot of enmity towards them. I mean Wali Kandhari even tried to roll down the rock to kill Guru Nanak Dev Ji. The attempts on the lives of these spiritual souls was multiple.
One of the things that I have learned a lot more about in the last few weeks is about Ardas. Doing ardas is something that we are all familiar as as Sikhs. We do our collective Ardas when we stand at the Gurdwara and have been doing Ardas since childhood. When we are little all we kind of think about is perhaps how long the ardas is and our minds are wandering around in different directions looking at different people. When we grow older I think a lot of us see our Ardas as a way to unburden the mind, ask God for forgiveness, or ask for the things we want, ask for blessings, ask for direction. I have heard from many people of a higher spiritual avastha than me over the years saying not to do ardas for others. I certainly didn’t understand this, I thought when you do ardas for others you are doing something good for them. After all the intention with our ardas for someone is that we want something positive for them, we are doing ardas for their healing, their wellbeing, etc. So why not do ardas for certain people? Or for ourselves? After all, God is infinite. It is not as if I am using up limited resources towards a specific person. In the Ardas at the Gurdwara we always hear of people doing ardas for all kinds of material things or days.
I watched a Nanak Naam video on ardas but I also talked to a Gurmukh and I understand now what that isn’t true. It is an ask of us to have God change Hukam. Let us think back to the story of Baba Atal Rai. Baba Atal Rai was the son of Guru Hargobind Sahib and a wise child. Guru Ji used to encourage Baba Atal Rai that he needed to be very careful with the power that he had. Baba Ji had a friend named Mohan. In the middle of the night Mohan was bitten by a Cobra, and he died. When he didn’t arrive to play, Baba Ji went and found out he was dead. He used his powers to awaken Mohan. Guru Ji was unhappy to hear this news, as he said that Baba Atal Rai had not obeyed Hukam. Now every time a boy died, they would have to decide who would live or die, when that is not in our hands. He reminded Atal Rai that Guru Arjan Dev Ji taught to accept God’s will even during their Shaheedi. Baba Ji took a bath, recited Gurbani and left for home. Guru Ji said “all those who are born must die. Such is the Almighty’s Will. What pleases Him is good. We should accept it cheerfully. Atal’s name and fame shall live forever.” At the place of Baba Ji’s cremation, there is a 9 storied Gurdwara, for the 9 years he lived. This sakhi of Baba Ji’s life reminds us of the importance of acceptance of Hukam. While Baba Ji had the power to bring Mohan back to life, he shouldn’t have.
I think that this is also a lesson to us when we do our ardas to have acceptance of God’s hukam. At the same time, we need to understand that acceptance of Hukam doesn’t mean we don’t act in our life. We can ask Guru Ji for guidance for a direction for ourselves, and they will give it in Hukamnama. We do act and make decisions, and that is Hukam as well. The other thing that goes wrong when we do ardas to God for things, is that we believe that this external God will do things for us. This God that is outside, up above, rather than the being that is within, all around, permeating everything and inside ourselves already. Bhai Satpal Singh describes how the ardas is not about “shifting the entire universe” to how we want things. It should be about giving up our own ego. He says when we do ardas to save a child for example, we are asking out of our attachment, out of the thought that life is better than death, out of our own understanding of how long this child should be living. He reminds us Guru Gobind Singh Ji didn’t do ardas for saving his own children and that Gurbani says “To ask for any other than You, Lord is the most miserable of miseries. Please bless me with your Name and make me content; may the hunger of my mind be satisfied.” Gurbani tells us very clearly not to ask for things, our only prayer is for Naam. Thus asking for even things that have a “good” intention, is going to bring us pain because it comes from ego, it comes from what “I” want. He describes the same is true of doing many paaths for someone or something.
We do need to remember that each of us has the power to do our ardas ourselves. It isn’t a more meaningful ardas when someone else does it. In Sikhi we do not have a priestly class, we don’t have castes or classes at all. I asked a Gurmukh how we help others if we can’t do ardas for them. They said to encourage the individual to do simran themselves. If they can’t and are ill for example, we can sit by them and do the simran and read paath and they can listen. This is useful because it is about getting the person themselves to listen, or learn from Gurbani. Even with being ill myself, I have learned that the time of illness brings us closer to our direction significantly. The time given is given to remind us of our purpose and give us time to do simran.
As we gain in our understanding of Ardas I think it is something deeper to be reflected upon. What do we say in our ardas?
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xiThn3o8gc Why we do Ardas? Nanak Naam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBTak3TSN-g How to Do Ardas by Nanak Naam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Df1M7r5jwQ Should we pray for another’s’ health? Nanak Naam
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